The conjugate addition of carbon nucleophiles to acceptor activated olefins is one of the most important reactions for carbon-carbon bond formation. With optically active metal complexes this transformation can be catalyzed enantioselectively. This review is a collection of the newer literature (since 2001) on this topic. The metal salts and complexes applied are in a broad range, starting from solely Lewis acidic M(II) and M(III) compounds, such as magnesium, zinc, boron, aluminum and the lanthanoids. Transitionmetal catalysts suitable for asymmetric conjugate additions are compounds of ruthenium, iridium, nickel, and palladium. The most flourishing fields are, however, the catalysis with rhodium and copper complexes. Rhodium catalysts often have a chiral diphosphane like BINAP, or an optically active olefin as the ligand, the latter being a newer development. The privileged ligand structures for copper catalysts are monodentate phosphoramidites with axially chiral BINOL or other biphenol units.

A healthy glow: Fluorogenic peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) functionalized with indoline derivatives are used to specifically sense G‐quadruplex formation. Upon hybridization of both PNAs to the single‐stranded flanking arms of quadruplex DNA (see scheme), the synthesis of a trimethine cyanine dye is templated. Dye formation can be detected by the appearance of a characteristic fluorescence signal.

Hypothemycin and related resorcylic acid lactones (RAL) bearing a cis-enone moiety have emerged as an alternative pharmacophore to heterocyclic motifs for kinase inhibition, and are endowed with a unique selectivity filter based on the irreversible reaction with a subset of the kinome bearing a suitably positioned cysteine residue. Two prototypical examples of "edited" RAL were evaluated for antitumoral, antimetastatic and antiangiogenic efficacy in an orthotopic murine renal cell carcinoma (RENCA) model. Both compounds (3 and 5) are good inhibitors of VEGFRs in vitro, and inhibited tumor growth in vivo with comparable efficacy to sunitinib, an FDA-approved VEGFRs inhibitor. Compound 3 promoted lung metastasis to a similar extent as sunitinib, while compound 5 strongly inhibited lung metastasis. This study attests to the potential of irreversible kinase inhibitors and molecular editing of natural pharmacophores and provides encouraging results to a clinically significant problem.

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Synthesis of water-soluble 5-mer Peptide Nucleic Acids (PNAs) functionalized at their 5' and 3'-ends with two original precursors of pentamethine cyanine dye synthesis is reported. The successful use of these PNA probes for sensing DNA hairpin structures in vitro was also demonstrated where specific hairpin formation was associated with the appearance of a characteristic fluorescence signal at 660 nm. A comparative study between three different strategies where PNAs were targeting either the stem or the loop of the hairpin was carried out. Best sensitivity was obtained using PNA sequences complementary to the loop sequence and directing both functional moieties toward the base of loop. Unprecedented proof-of-concept for the simultaneous sensing of hairpin and quadruplex DNAs with a nonoverlapping two-color system (C3 and C5) is also demonstrated.

Vier gewinnt: Mit Indolinderivaten funktionalisierte, fluorogene Peptidnucleinsäuren (PNAs) wurden zur spezifischen Erkennung der G‐Quadruplexbildung eingesetzt. Bei der Hybridisierung zweier solcher PNAs an die flankierenden Einzelstränge einer Quadruplex‐DNA (siehe Schema) wird ein Trimethincyanin‐Farbstoff gebildet, der anhand eines charakteristischen Fluoreszenzsignals detektiert werden kann.

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